About CELTA

CELTA stands for “Certificate in English Language Teaching to Adults”. It is the original certificate course in teaching English to speakers of other languages (TESOL) or teaching English as a foreign language (TEFL), and it has been running for four decades. It is highly respected and recognized globally, with 7 out of 10 employers worldwide asking applicants to have it.

Course content

It’s a very intensive course, there isn’t really time to do anything else, so you have to dedicate all your attention to teaching for four weeks, and that’s something that when we’re in a job, when we’re teaching, when we’ve got a full timetable, we’re not necessarily able to do.

An IHC or a CELTA course will include a lot of input, seminars, workshops about lesson design, about methodology, practical techniques, teaching in different contexts, issues like language acquisition, and so on.

Course content

It will include, most importantly, teaching practice: on an IHC or a CELTA you have to teach. And you teach real students, you don’t teach your colleagues, you don’t teach people who are pretending to learn English; you teach genuine learners of English and you’re observed doing that, and you receive feedback.
You’re with a group of people with the same objectives. You’re with six or 10 or 12 people who are all interested in developing as teachers, and that’s a really important element of the course. A successful IHC or a successful CELTA is one where the candidates support each other.

They’re supported from above by the trainer, they’re supported by the students, but there’s also a lot of horizontal support with the trainees kind of helping one another.